Week 4: The Expanse Week In Review

In this blog series, we will report on the production progress and other news of The Expanse each week. We will collect the latest social media and press activity from the show’s production team, cast, and the community. We hope this series will be useful for those who are not able to closely monitor social media, and provide an easy way to catch up on all the latest Expanse updates each week.

To catch up on the previous week of updates, check out our last post here.

Production

This week, the Production Office, as well as other members of the crew, continued sharing occasional photos and insights into the production process, which is now a week into Block 2. For those interested, check out the PO’s tweet about the instruction labels the crew leaves around on set; and here is a quick video clip of Brian Hui, the makeup artist on set, applying Dominique Tipper’s (Naomi Nagata) Belter neck tattoo. Wes Chatham also shared this video of a tube light array being positioned for a shot on the New Terra set, for the fellow mechanics in the fanbase.

In other news, Orbit Books is hosting a sweepstakes competition which you can enter for a chance to win the entire The Expanse book series. You can sign up for it here. Unfortunately, this competition is limited to US residents – sorry, rest of the planet.

Speaking of the rest of the planet, it appears that Season 3 of The Expanse is not coming to Amazon Prime in Europe just yet. Redditor u/floppart spotted a list of Prime Germany releases for next month, from which our favorite sci-fi series is sadly still missing. We will continue to keep our ears to the ground for any updates on this.

In more uplifting news, The Expanse was featured in this article by Aerospace America, the official magazine of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The article acknowledges the series’ realistic approach to science and space exploration, a much-praised trait that attracts not only die-hard sci-fi fans but aerospace and other scientific experts to the show.

We're shooting in Dundas this week. We like to schedule at least one day inside, in case we have to move scenes around because of weather. But because the forecast is clear, we're inside on a nice (although cold) day.#TheExpanse@PrimeVideopic.twitter.com/grMrqlNwRQ

Finally, two cast members celebrated their birthdays last week – everyone’s favorite villain, François Chau (Jules-Pierre Mao); and Elias Toufexis (Kenzo/Protomolecule hybrids), who performs motion capture for the protomolecule hybrids since his character, Kenzo, was unceremoniously consumed by the protomolecule on Eros in Season 1. If you haven’t already, be sure to follow François and Elias on Twitter and wish them a happy one.

That’s all for production news – read on for some updates from the community.

Community

The community has been fairly active the past week, with a lot of fantastic new fan art and cosplay being shared online.

First, The Expanse was mentioned in the web-comic strip Mr. J Comics, which you can check out here. Thanks, Mr. J! Be sure to follow him and his work on Twitter. Meanwhile, resident space bartenders Paine × MacTane released their 60th cocktail recipe, named after Xinlong, the rock hopper flown by Diogo’s uncle, Mateo. Check it out here. If you’re in the Baltimore area, be sure to catch them teaching Lang-Belta at ChessieCon next month.

The cosplay competition hosted by Christina Ward (@theora666) concluded last week, with many more great entries and other cosplay outside the competition being shared. All three factions were thoroughly represented: Our own @Fadawah dressed up as a dashing MCRN officer, backed up by heavily armored marine @EddStoke. Even Lieutenant Lopez from Season 1 received some love from @ProteanAudio.

Christina has sent off the entries to the guest judges, so keep an eye out for the winners to be announced on Halloween. There were quite a few this week so we apologize if we missed some in this post!

A couple of interesting videos were posted as well. Gamers may be interested in this weapon mod test conducted by Henry Wilkie in Space Engineers using in-game recreations of the Rocinante and Agatha King. Youtuber First-Pass also posted this in-depth technical analysis of the MCRN Donnager and how it would perform compared to some other well known science-fiction starships.

That’s all for this week, folks. Check back next Monday for a rundown of the upcoming week in the world of The Expanse. For those interested, our detailed record of Expanse-related web activity for this month, courtesy of human super-computer SkalmanIsDaMan, is available here. As always, if we missed something you think belongs in this article, please get in touch with us and let us know!